Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Moscow Times reports that the Soviet habit of informing on one’s neighbors is being reborn with vigor in Vladmir Putin’s Russia, starting with the children:

The Federal Migration Service on Monday lauded members of a nationalist youth group for rounding up dozens of illegal foreign workers and turning them over to authorities. Migration service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky told reporters that Mestniye members "really helped" the agency in detaining 72 people attempting to obtain work illegally, Interfax reported. Romodanovsky did not elaborate on the nature of Mestniye's assistance, but the youth group's spokesman, Andrei Groznetsky, said activists used subterfuge to blow the whistle on the workers. In a daylong operation Saturday, Mestniye activists pulled up in cars to a market near Yaroslavskoye Shosse in northeast Moscow where migrant workers typically wait for temporary manual labor jobs. "It's no secret that they hide in groups next to the building materials store near the market looking for work," Groznetsky said. The driver, posing as a businessman in search of cheap labor to renovate his dacha, would call over three or four foreigners standing nearby and offer them 1,000 rubles each for four hours of work, Groznetsky said. But instead of taking them to the dacha, the driver would then drop the workers off at a nearby migration service office to have their documents checked, he said. "We have close links with the Federal Migration Service and have helped them before," Groznetsky said.

Created two years ago as a pro-Kremlin youth group, Mestniye has drifted more toward anti-immigration stunts in line ideologically with the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration. This summer Mestniye activists distributed fliers urging Russians not to take taxi rides in cars driven by illegal immigrants. The flier showed a picture of a young blond woman refusing a ride from a leering, dark-skinned driver. Romodanovsky defended the use of the Mestniye activists in cracking down on illegal immigration, despite the fact that they can occasionally be "very combative." "If they are utilized wisely, they can be useful," Romodanovsky said at the news conference.

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PUTIN MUST FREE THE NEMTSOV WHITE PAPER!

That craven coward Vladimir Putin is censoring the brilliant, courageous and patriotic research of former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov reviewing Putin's record in office. We demand this outrage cease immediately. Read the paper in English PDF here. The HTML version (can be cut and pasted) is here.

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Tell all the truth but tell it slant,Success in circuit lies:Too bright for our infirm delightThe truth's superb surprise.

As lightning to the children easedWith explanation kind,The truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind.

-- Emily Dickinson

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From childhood's hour I have not beenAs others were, I have not seenAs others saw, I could not bringMy passions from the common spring.From the same source I have not takenMy sorrow, I could not awakenMy heart to joy at the same tone,And all I loved, I loved alone.Then in my childhood, in the dawnOf a most stormy life was drawnFrom every depth of good and illThe mystery which binds me still:From the torrent, and the fountain,From the red cliff of the mountain,From the sun that 'round me rolledIn its autumn tint of gold;From the lightning in the sky,As it passed me, flying by,From the thunder, and the storm,And the cloud that took the form(When the rest of Heaven was blue)Of a demon in my view.

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Girl Power: Ginger Rogers could do everything Fred Astaire could do . . . backwards, and in high heels.

Pioneer Power: Though he painted more than 1,000 works of art in his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh sold only two.

Mark Twain: "It's a man with very little imagination who can only spell a word one way."

Socrates: "To be is to do." Sartre: "To do is to be." Sinatra: "Do be do be do."

Girl Power: On May 14, 2006, a perfect game was pitched in the Oakfield, New York Little League. Perfect as in 18 consecutive strikeouts. The pitcher's name? Katie Brownell. She's the only female player in the league.

Girl Power: On April 13, 2007, the Independent reported that women will soon be able to produce sperm cells from their bone marrow, making men obsolete.